Joseph and His Brothers (Joseph und seine Brüder) is a four-part novel byThomas Mann, written over the course of 16 years. Mann retells the familiar stories of Genesis, from Jacob to Joseph (chapters 27–50), setting it in the historical context of the Amarna Period.
Mann considered it his greatest work.
The tetralogy consists of:
The Stories of Jacob (Die Geschichten Jaakobs; written December 1926 to October 1930, Genesis 27–36)
Young Joseph (Der junge Joseph; written January 1931 to June 1932, Genesis 37)
Joseph in Egypt (Joseph in Ägypten; written July 1932 to 23 August 1936, Genesis 38–39)
Joseph the Provider (Joseph, der Ernährer; written 10 August 1940 to 4 January 1943, Genesis 40–50)
Map of the ancient Near East during the Amarna Period, showing the great powers of the period: Egypt (green), Hatti (yellow), the Kassite kingdom of Babylon (purple), Assyria (grey), and Mittani (red). Lighter areas show direct control, darker areas represent spheres of influence. The extent of the Achaean/Mycenaean civilization is shown in orange.
Mann sets the story in the 14th century BC and makes Akhenaten the pharaoh who appoints Joseph his vice-regent. Joseph is aged 28 at the ascension of Akhenaten, which would mean he was born about 1380 BC in standard Egyptian chronology, and Jacob in the mid-1420s BC. Other contemporary rulers mentioned include Tushratta and Suppiluliuma.
A dominant topic of the novel is Mann's exploration of the status of mythology and his presentation of the Late Bronze Age mindset with regard to mythical truths and the emergence of monotheism.Events of the story of Genesis are frequently associated and identified with other mythic topics.
Jacob's sojourn in Mesopotamia (hiding from the wrath of Esau) is paralleled with Joseph's life in Egypt (exiled by the jealousy of his brothers), and on a smaller scale his captivity in the well; they are further identified with the "hellraid" of Inanna-Ishtar-Demeter, the Mesopotamian Tammuz myth, the Jewish Babylonian captivity as well as the Harrowing of Hell of Jesus Christ.
Abraham is repeatedly presented as the man who "discovered God" (a Hanif, or discoverer of monotheism). Jacob as Abraham's heir is charged with further elaborating this discovery. Joseph is surprised to find Akhenaten on the same path (although Akhenaten is not the "right person" for the path), and Joseph's success with the pharaoh is largely due to the latter's sympathy for "Abrahamic" theology.
Such a connection of (proto-)Judaism and Atenism had been suggested before Mann, most notably by Sigmund Freud in his Moses and Monotheism, which had appeared in 1939, just before Mann began work on the tetralogy's fourth part—although in the last installment of Mann's work,
Akhenaten is postulated as the Pharaoh of the Exodus contemporary of Moses, while Mann in his novella "Das Gesetz" (1944) casts Ramesses II in that role.
As Joseph is saved from the well and sold to Egypt, he adopts a new name, Osarseph, replacing the Yo- element with a reference to Osiris to indicate that he is now in the underworld. This change of name to account for changing circumstances encourages Amenhotep to change his own name to Akhenaten.
The tetralogy closes with a detailed account of Jacob's famous Blessing of his sons and their tribes, his death and the funeral. The characters of the individual brothers are determined by epithets taken from the text of the Blessing of Jacob throughout the details; thus Reuben is "turbulent as the waters" (and associated with Aquarius by Jacob). Simeon and Levi are known as the "twins" (and associated with Gemini), even though they are a year apart, and portrayed as violent bullies. Juda is a lion (Leo), and inherits Abraham's blessing since Jacob disrobes his elder brothers of their birthright. Zebulun shows predilection for Phoenicians and seafaring. Jacob calls "bony" Issachar a donkey to evoke Asellus, γ and δ of Cancer. Dan is sharp-witted and "suited as a judge" (Libra). Asher is fond of dainties. Joseph is blessed by Jacob in his dual aspect of male (Dumuzi, god of seed and harvest), with reference to Taurus, and female (since for Jacob, his beloved Rachel lives on in Joseph, and in his affinity with the nourishing Earth), with reference to Virgo. As Jacob comes to Benjamin, his strength is almost gone, and with his last breath he rather incoherently compares his youngest son with a wolf, partly because of Lupus in Scorpio.[clarification needed]
Jacob blessing Joseph's second son first. Rembrandt, 1656
F. Overbeck, 1816/17: Joseph is sold by his brothers.
Philipp Veit, 1816/17: Joseph fleeing from Potiphar's wife.
Each one of the four books is divided into seven chapters, each of which is divided into further subdivisions. The first and last book also comprise a “Prelude” each.
《요셉과 그의 형제》(Joseph und seine Brüder)는 독일의 소설가토마스 만의 작품 중 하나이다. 구약성서에 나오는 족장설화인 요셉설화를 소재로 하였기 때문에,나치 독일에 의해 출판금지 등으로 탄압받았다. 유대인인 토마스 자신도 공산주의자라는 낙인이 찍힌 채 추방당했다.
토마스 만의 4부작 장편소설이다. 《야콥 이야기》(1933), 《젊은 요셉》(1934), 《이집트의 요셉》(1936), 《양치기 요셉》(1943) 등이다.
만은 제1차 세계대전 중에는 신흥 독일을 구세력인 열강(列强)이 핍박한다 하여 독일 문화를 지키기 위해 전쟁을 지지하여 형인 하인리히와 불화를 빚었다. 그러나 민주적인 바이마르 헌법이 선포되고 이어 이에 반대하는 세력이 대두되자, 국민의 행복을 위해 데모크라시를 수호하는 전사가 되었다. 《마(魔)의 산》이 12년간이나 걸린 것은 자기관망(自己觀望)을 위해서였다. 1926년부터 《요셉과 그의 형제들》의 준비가 시작되었다. 구약성서의 요셉전기를 심리·사회학적으로 고쳐 써서 신으로부터도 사람으로부터도 축복을 받는 사람, 영(靈)과 생명의 조화를 훌륭히 수행한 사람으로서 요셉을 완전하게 인간화(人間化)하여 파시즘의 20세기적 신화를 조소하였다.
20세기 독일 문학을 대표하는 소설가, 평론가. 독일 북부의 뤼베크에서 부유한 사업가 집안의 둘째 아들로 태어났다. 세기말의 암울한 데카당스 분위기에서 학창시절을 보냈고 일찍부터 문학,?예술, 철학 등에 관심이 많았다. 1891년 아버지의 죽음으로 형편이 어려워지자 보험회사에서 잠시 근무했고, 뮌헨으로 이사 가 1933년까지 살았다. 이때부터 집필 활동을 시작했고,
쇼펜하우어, 바그너, 니체 등에 심취했다.
1898년 단편집 《키 작은 프리데만 씨》를 발표하고, 1901년 《부덴브로크가》를 출간하여 작가로서 자리를 잡는다.
이어 1903년 《토니오 크뢰거》, 《트리스탄》 등을 집필한다.
1905년에 카티아 프링스하임과 결혼하여 그해에 장녀 에리카 만을 얻는다.
1911년에는 휴양지에서 작곡가 구스타프 말러의 서거 소식을 듣고 《베니스에서의 죽음》을 쓰기 시작하여 이듬해에 발표한다.
제1차 세계대전이 끝나가던 1918년 10월에 600쪽이 넘는 방대한 논문집 《비정치적인 사람의 관찰》을 완성하는데, 여기서 그는 세계대전을 지지하는 발언을 한다.
그러나 차츰 이러한 경향에서 멀어져 나중에는 민주주의와 시민계급을 옹호했고, 이러한 세계관이 반영된 대작 《마의 산》을 1924년 발표, 소설가로서 세계적 명성을 얻으며 1929년 노벨문학상을 받는다.
1933년 ‘리하르트 바그너의 고난과 위대함’이라는 제목으로 국외 강연 여행 도중 히틀러의 집권으로 신변에 위협을 느껴 귀국을 포기한다.
이후 스위스에서 《요셉과 그 형제들》을 집필하여 1943년에 4부작을 완성한다.
1936년에는 독일 국적을 포기하고 1938년 미국에서 망명 생활을 보내는데,
여러 강연과 연설로 바쁜 와중에도 1947년 음악과 독일에 관한 소설이라 할 만한 《파우스트 박사》를 내놓는다.
1952년 미국에서 스위스로 거처를 옮기고 3년 후인 1955년 취리히에서 영면한다. 접기
토마스 만 스스로 자신의 최고의 걸작으로 뽑은 소설 {요셉과 그 형제들}이 마침내 우리 나라에 완역되어 출판되었다.
이 장편소설은 1926년 12월에서 1936년 8월까지와 1940년 8월부터 1943년 1월까지, 약 13년이라는 긴 세월이 집필에 투자되었다.
자료를 찾기 위한 준비 기간까지 합하면 이 작품에 쏟아 부은 작가의 정열에 혀를 내두르지 않을 수 없게 된다. 또한 이 기간 동안 작가는 독일 나치정권의 집권과 제2차세계대전, 그리고 스위스 및 미국 망명 생활 등을 경험했다.
총 4부작으로 완성된 이 소설은 작가 스스로 자신의 최고 걸작이라고 시인하기도 한 작품이다. 잘 알려진, 그에게 노벨 문학상의 영예를 안겨 준 청년기의 작품 {부덴브로크가의 사람들, 한 가문의 몰락}과 작가가 50대에 쓴 {마의 산}, 그리고 70대에 접어들면서 완성한 이 {요셉과 그 형제들}, 이렇게 세 소설을 스스로 평가하면서 작가는, 처음 것은 독일 소설이었고, 두번째는 유럽 소설, 그리고 세번째는
신화를 토대로 유머러스하게 그려낸 인간에 관한 노래라 말하며,
이는 보다 풍요롭게 전개되어 간 정신의 성장 과정이라 할 수 있다고 고백하기도 했다.
♣ 인류의 기원에 천착―성서와 신화 읽기 이 소설은 구약성경 창세기 27장에서 50장까지의 짧은 이야기가 기초가 되었다. 그래서 성경에 나오는 요셉의, 형제들에게 미움을 받아 이집트로 팔려가 재상이 된다는 이야기를 아는 사람이라면
토마스 만이 그려낸 이 거대한 상상력의 세계에 얼마든지 쉽게 다가갈 수도 있을 것이다.
하지만 성경에 소개된 요셉의 이야기는, 괴테의 표현 그대로 하자면 '너무 짧다'
세계적인 문호 괴테는 작가라면 이처럼 아름다운 이야기를 세세하게 그려내야 할 것만 같은 일종의 사명감을 느끼지 않을 수 없다고 말했다.
괴테가 이루지 못한 꿈을 토마스 만이 대신 실현한 것이다.
그는 <요셉>을 기독교 안은 물론이고 기독교 밖에 서 있는 사람들에게도 충분히 읽힐 수 있도록 충만한 생명력으로 기록하고 있다.
토마스 만은 자신이 이 작품을 쓰게 된 동기 중의 하나가 나이 때문이라고 밝혔다.
이전에는 종교사와 신학이 자신의 관심사가 되리라고 짐작도 하지 못했었는데
나이가 들어 인생을 돌이켜보니 인간, 혹은 인류의 기원에 천착하지 않을 수 없게 되었고, 자연스럽게 몰두하게 된 것이 성서와 신화라고 했다.
♣ 작품에 흐르는 정신사적 배경
이 책의 정신사적 배경을 살펴보기 위해서는 작품이 쓰여질 당시 독일에서 신화가 어떻게 받아들여지고 있었는지를 살펴봐야 할 것이다.
토마스 만의 {요셉과 그 형제들} 제1권 [야곱 이야기]가 출판된 1933년은 히틀러가 정권을 장악한 해이다. 유대인과 슬라브 족을 증오하고 게르만 족의 부흥과 독일의 유럽 제패를 꿈꾼 히틀러의 나치즘은, 당시 독일인들에게 히틀러를 일종의 메시아로 받아들이게 했다.
당시 히틀러가 건설한 제3제국은 게르만 신화의 영광을 재현하자는, 신화의 구원시대로 인식되었다.
낭만주의 시대에 시작된 신화라는 테마는 니체를 거치면서 큰 활력을 얻었다. 특히 니체에 의해 언급된 '새로운 신화'(1871년)는 나치에 의해 왜곡된다. 이처럼 신화라는 테마가 '일상적인 구호'로 자리잡는데 큰 역할을 한 셈이기도 하다.
토마스 만 또한 신화를 고민하면서 이런 흐름에 전혀 무관할 수는 없었다. 그는 니체로 소급되는 낭만주의적인 신화 연구를 어느 정도까지는 인정했지만, 니체를 출발점으로 삼고 '새로운 신화'의 탄생을 왜곡하는 자들의 의견은 받아들이지 않았다.
토마스 만은 이들을 나치즘의 선구자로 해석한 것이다. 토마스 만은 파시스트들의 신화는 이성을 마비시키는 비합리적인 도취라고 평가했다.
그는 지성인이 앞장서고 있는 파시즘으로부터 신화를 빼앗아, 신화가 휴머니즘을 위해 사용될 수 있도록 기능을 바꿔야 한다고 주장하기도 했다. 그는 자신이 오래 전부터 써오고 있는 {요셉과 그 형제들}도 바로 신화가 다시 휴머니즘을 위해 쓰이게 하기 위한 것이라고 했다.
♣ 신화의 옷을 입은 주인공 요셉과 탐무즈-길가메쉬-오시리스-아도니스의 계보
이 소설은 다양한 신화들로 겹겹이 싸여 있다고 해도 과언이 아니다. 토마스 만이 깨닫고 싶어하던 기원에 대한 답이 바로 '신화'라는 틀 속에 있다는 것이다. 인류가 가지고 있는 문화들은 모두 기원신화를 안고 있다. 즉 천지창조, 신들의 전쟁, 인류의 기원, 홍수 이야기 등 등장하는 인물들은 비록 다르지만 각각이 포함하는 요소는 거의 엇비슷한 기원신화들을 갖고 있다는 것이다.
그런데 토마스 만은 이들 신화들이 독자적으로 자생한, 독창적으로 창조된 것이 아니라, 하나의 신화가 시대가 흐르면서 옷을 갈아입듯 조금씩 다른 형태를 띤 것이라고 말하고 있다. 그리스 신화의 모태는 메소포타미아 신화인 것이다. 토마스 만은 자신의 소설 속 주인공인 요셉을 가리켜 '신화를 가지고 노는 사기꾼'이라고 익살스럽게 말한 적이 있다. 그는 요셉이 그리스 신화의 티폰의 계보에 속하는, 메소포타미아 신화의 탐무즈와 이집트 신화의 오시리스 그리고 그리스 신화의 아도니스와 디오니소스로 이어지는 유형이라고 했다. 고대인들은 특히 신화 속의 인물과 자신들을 동일하게 여기곤 했는데, 요셉 또한 바빌론과 이집트의 세력권에서 살았던 그곳 신화에 등장하는 탐무즈라든가 오시리스를 알고 있었을 것이므로 고대인답게 그 신화 속의 영웅들과 자신을 동일시하였다는 것이다. 고대인은 현대인과는 다른 자아를 가졌다는 것이 작가의 생각이었다.
스페인의 문화철학자인 오르테가 이 가세트 Ortega y Gasset는 "고대인은 뭔가 하기 전에 한걸음 뒤로 물러나 과거에서 전형을 찾아보고 마치 잠수복을 입듯이 그 안에 미끄러져 들어가 안정감을 얻은 다음 현실의 문제로 뛰어든다"고 말하기도 했다. 신화는 흔히 삶의 원형(아키타이프)을 보여준다고 말한다. 시간에 얽매이지 않는, 시간을 갖지 않는 하나의 경건한 고정틀, 생명이 피와 살로 그 틀을 채워 넣을 때마다 되살아나는 것이 신화라는 말이다.
작가는 신화의 반복으로 여긴 고대의 인물로 클레오파트라를 소개하기도 했다. 그 증거는 그녀의 죽음이라고 했다. 가슴에 독사를 올려놓고 죽은 클레오파트라. 그것은 메소포타미아 신화의 이쉬타르, 이집트 신화의 이시스를 재현하는 삶이었다. 이쉬타르는 흔히 뱀옷을 입은 모습이거나 아예 목에 독사를 감고 있는데, 클레오파트라는 자신이 누구인지, 누구의 발자취를 따라가고 있는지 알았다는 것이다. 작가는 여기서 한걸음 더 나아가 예수의 삶 또한 기존의 종교적 문화유산이 모두 투영된 것이므로, 그의 이야기 또한 구약성서(또는 신화)를 원형으로 한 위대한 삶이었다고 말하기도 했다.
♣ 고대 오리엔트의 유대 전설과 바빌론·이집트 신화 읽기
그렇다면 우리 주인공 요셉은 누구의 옷을 입고 있는 것일까? 처녀 생산, 죽음의 문턱에서 부활하는 요셉, 텅빈 무덤(우물) 등은 그가 바로 예수의 전형임을 알게 한다. 물론 요셉이 입고 있는 신화의 옷은 한 가지가 아니다. 아름다운 그리스의 미소년 아도니스, 바빌론 신화의 갈기갈기 찢겨져 제물로 바쳐진 자 탐무즈이며, 또한 여신 이쉬타르가 몸 달아 한 길가메쉬이기도 한 것이다.
작가는 누군가를 '인용'하는 삶, 풀어서 설명하자면, 신화 속에 등장하는 어느 영웅의 말을 자신의 입에 올리거나 그의 행동까지 따라하는 삶, 즉 신화 속에 사는 인생은, 신화에 올리는 일종의 예배 의식(儀式)과도 같다고 말하고 있다. 하지만 자칫 이 신화들이 소설 읽기에 복병이 될 수도 있다. 토마스 만이 이야기하고 있는 신화들이, 우리에게는 널리 알려지지 않은 고대 오리엔트의 유대 전설과 바빌론, 이집트 신화들이기 때문이다. 하지만 이 사소함 탓에 소설 읽기를 멈추는 어리석은 행동을 할 사람은 없을 것이다. 성경의 요셉을 아는 사람들이든 혹은 이 소설 전면에 깔려 있는 고대 신화들을 잘 이해하고 있는 사람들이든, 요셉의 이야기를 신화와 접목시켜, 더 나아가 그에게 피와 살을 덧붙여 다시 생생하게 살아 숨쉬게 한 토마스 만의 묘사와 상상력에는 혀를 내두르게 될 것이기 때문이다.
♣ 인간은 어떻게 경건해지나
메소포타미아의 탐무즈와 길가메쉬 신화, 이집트의 오시리스 신화, 성서의 요셉 이야기, 그리스·로마의 아도니스와 디오니소스 신화 그리고 예수의 생애는 모두 죽음을 넘어 부활하는 사상을 그 근간으로 삼고 있다.
토마스 만은 인간이 남긴 이들 가장 오래된 문서들에 파묻혀서 16년의 세월을 보냈다. 그리고 순수 집필기간만 13년이었다. 그는 이 소설을 통해서 태곳적 것이나 원시적인 것 혹은 야만적인 것에 대한 흥미로움을 찾으려 한 것이 아니다. 그가 진정으로 구하고자 한 것은 바로 인간의 존엄성과 인간의 사명이었다. 인생은, 그가 겪어온 인생은 질펀한 고통이 도처에 몸을 감추고 있는 시대였다. 나치즘을 경험한 시대의 사람들은 무엇이 '인간의 죽음'인지를 체험했다. 그리고 반드시 '부활'이 필요했으며, 죽음을 넘어선 부활이 바로 인생의 줄거리인 것을 이해했던 것이다.
새롭게 다시 산다는 것 그리고 신을 찾는 인간만이 경건해질 수 있다는 것을 그는 만년에 깨닫게 된 것이다.
♣ 작품구성 ●
이집트에서의 요셉
타락의 도시 이집트로 내려간 요셉은 이집트의 대인 포티파르(보디발)에게 팔려 노예가 된다.
야곱의 유일한 어린양으로 모든 사랑을 독차지하던 요셉이 노예라니, 그들의 신은 도대체 무슨 생각으로 이런 시련을 주는 것일까?
하지만 요셉은 분명 모든 일이 먼저 알고 행하시는 신의 뜻임을 깨닫게 된다.
아버지 야곱에 대한 그리움을 누르며, 꼭 만나게 될 날을 기다리며 이집트에서 높이 오른 자가 되고자 한다.
하지만 그의 앞에 놓여진 현실은 뱀의 유혹이었는데.. 접기
평점 분포 9.1
10년 이상을 읽으려고 벼르다가 이제야 이제 되었다. 토마스 만은 범접할 수 없는 고봉과 같은 존재였는데 이제야 그 실체에 조금은 접근한 느낌이랄까, 작가를 존경하지 않을 수 없게 만든다. 존재의지 2018-06-22 공감 (1) 댓글 (6)
이렇게 슬플 수 있다니. 책을 닫는 순간 눈물이 왈칵 쏟아졌다. 야곱의 슬픔이 곧 나의 슬픔이였다. 참으로 많이 기다린 결혼과 출산이였는데 아내가 이렇게 갔다. 그것도 길거리에서. 너무 슬퍼서 야곱이 원망스러웠기도 했다. Huisong So 2020-02-26 공감 (0) 댓글 (0)
==== 알라딘 독자 마이리뷰
미뤄왔던 명작, 드디어 읽다.
토마스 만, 이렇게 이름만 불러 봐도 어쩐지 쉽게 읽히지 않을 듯한 독일인스러운 완고함이 뚝뚝 떨어진다. 맞다. 그나마 <로테, 바이마르에 오다>는 쉽게 읽혔고, 유작이자 미완성 작품인 <사기꾼 펠릭스 크룰의 고백>은 또 예상 외로 희극이기도 하지만 그래도 여전히 토마스 만, 하면 선뜻 드는 생각이 (지나치게)진지한 작가라는 것. <마의 산>. 나는 그걸 무슨 마음으로 고등학교 시절에 읽었는지 몰라. 삼중당 문고판으로 읽었는데 당시 10대 후반 특유의 기질, 세상 고민은 혼자 다 짊어지고 있는 것 같은, 사회분위기도 그 시절엔 그래야 한다는 듯 은근히 부채질했던 것 같기도 한 “Strum und Drang” 질풍노도를 해야 할 것 같은 꼬임에 휩쓸려 그랬던 것 같다. 말 그대로 쥐뿔도 모르면서. 그래도 그게 어디야, 그지?
토마스 만은 보이는 족족 읽어치웠다. 딱 하나 빼고. 《요셉과 그 형제들》. 이 작품이 번역되어 우리글로 읽을 수 있다는 걸 안 지가 벌써 10년이 넘는다.
그러나 다른 건 몰라도 이 책은 쉽게 손에 들 수 없었다. 일단 분량에 기가 넘어갔다. 여섯 권에 3,510쪽.
게다가 구약의 창세기를 기본으로 하는 텍스트를 전혀 기독교적인 환경을 경험해보지 못한 유물론자가 읽을 엄두가 나지 않았던 것. 그러나 시간은 흐른다. 그동안 나는 이 책과는 별개로 구약성서를 순전히 호기심으로 읽어봤으며, 몇 년 후 다시 토마스 만을 검색할 때는, 맞아 이 책이 있었지, 이젠 읽어볼 때가 됐다는 생각을 하게 됐으며, 그리하여 《요셉과 그 형제들》의 첫 번째 <야곱 이야기>의 첫 장을 넘겼고, 넘기자마자 곧바로 고난의 행진이 시작됨을 눈치 챘다.
19년 전 서울대 독문과 교수를 하던 안삼환 선생이 독자로 하여금 주눅이 들지 않을 수 없게 이 책의 위대성을 언급하고, 이어 역자 장지연이 쓴 ‘옮긴이의 말’ “신화를 읽는다는 일, 인간의 본질을 들여다본다는 일”이 이어지고 나서야 드디어 첫 번째 책 <야곱 이야기>를 시작한다.
<야곱 이야기>도 1부가 아닌 “저승 나들이”라는 제목의 ‘서곡’이 달려 있어 저 먼 먼 시대, 하늘이 처음 열렸던 때부터 드디어 천지가 만들어지는 순간을, 다분히 작가의 사색을 통해 설명을 한다. 작가는 애초 천지창조부터 요셉의 시절까지 기독교의 신, 하느님 또는 주님을 아직 발전이 덜 된 신으로 상정한다. 그럼 서곡이나마 어떻게 펼쳐지는지 한 번 보자.
최초의 인간, 또는 완전한 인간인 아담 카드몬이 있었다. 카드몬은 순수한 빛으로 이루어진 청년으로 인간의 원형이자 총괄개념으로 만들어진 창조물인 바, 처음부터 모든 창조를 위협하는 악에 대항해 싸울 전사로 선발된 자아다. 그러나 안타깝게 싸우다가 부상을 입고 급기야 악령의 포로로 떨어지고 만다. 그리하여 신은 두 번째 사자使者를 파견하기에 이르고, 이 피조물은 최초의 인간보다 고귀한 자아를 지니게 만들었다. 세속의 육신으로부터 해방되어 다시 빛의 세계로 돌아가는 숙명의 두 번째 사자는 아직도 이 세상에 존재할까? 그럴 수도 있고, 아닐 수도 있다.
최초의 인간다운 존재를 쉽게 “영혼”이라 이야기한다. 영혼은 생명은 있으되 지식이 없는 존재. 평안과 행복이 지배하는 높은 세상을 마다하고 물질에 마음이 기울어 물질과 몸을 섞어 형체를 만들고 싶어 안달을 했다. 그래 정작 형체를 얻고 보니, 즉 사람의 몸을 얻어 최초 이후의 인간이 되어보니, 쾌락을 얻고자 하는 욕구만 커지게 되어, 이 괴로워하는 영혼을 위해 신은 드디어 세상을 창조하기에 이른다고 작가는 말한다. 그러면 두 번째 사자는 무엇일까. 신은 자신의 신성을 “정신”으로 만들어 세상의 인간에게 보냄으로써 영혼과 유사하나 영혼 자체는 아닌, 지식을 얻을 수 있는 상태로 전환시킨다. 그 결과 이제 영혼만 떠나면 형체의 세계 역시 종말을 맞을 수밖에 없게 되는 것. 다분히 문학적인 발상이라서 비록 쉬운 이야기는 아니었지만 안도는 된다. 이때 ‘정신’이 두 번째 사자.
그리하여 드디어 인간의 역사가 시작된다. 코세 사람 쿠리갈주가 바벨에서 수메르와 악카르 사람들을 다스렸을 때 자신을 사계의 왕이라 자칭하며 ‘벨-마르둑’이란 신을 섬겼단다. 벨은 히브리어로 ‘바알’, 마르둑은 ‘태양신의 송아지’라는 뜻. 이 때, “어느 남자”가 달 신, 일명 신Sin을 섬기는 ‘우르’라는 곳에서 살았는데 당시의 강력한 통치자가 님로드의 거대한 탑(바벨탑)을 건설하는 일에 반대하여 식솔을 이끌고 정처 없이 유랑을 떠났다가 북쪽에 있는 달의 도시 하란에 도착해 수 년 동안 머물며 새로운 친인척 관계를 맺었다. 달신 신Sin을 섬기는 곳은 후에 ‘시날’이라는 지명으로 바뀌고 지금은 ‘시나이’라는 산의 이름으로 남게 된다.
어느 남자는 다시 아내와 가솔, 하란에서 새로 생긴 친척들을 거느리고 서쪽으로 길을 잡아 가 도착한 곳이 바로 가나안. 처음 이들이 도착했을 때는 하티 족이 땅의 주인이었다. 그래 이들은 가나안 바로 옆에 자리를 잡고, 이왕 신을 섬기려면 가장 으뜸가는 신을 섬기겠다고 결심하여 “엘로힘”이란 신을 선택했다. 그러니까 엘로힘은 남자에게 “자손이 모래와 별처럼 번창하여 민족을 이루게 하고, 모든 민족에게 축복을 주는 민족이 되리라”고 약속을 한다. 또한 “가나안 땅은 영원히 남자와 후손의 땅이 되리라”고 축복을 해준다. 약속의 내용을 읽은 후에 확실해졌다. 엘로힘이라는 신이 후에 유대교, 기독교, 이슬람교로 갈라질 종교에서 말하는 하느님임이.
이런 축복을 보는 문학 작가의 눈. 축복? 축복이라고? 정말 축복이란 빌어먹을 것이 있는 거야? 토마스 만은 “단어 뒤에 깔려있는 가치평가”를 한 번 보자고 하면서, 말 그대로의 축복만 받는 경우는 아주 드물거나 아예 없다고 단정한다. 맞다, 맞아. 신에게 들은 은근한 속삭임은 정말 축복이 아니라 나중에 아브람, 이사악, 야곱, 요셉으로 이어지는 민족들의 역사를 보더라도 평생에 걸친 축복은 단 한 번도 없었다. 축복을 ‘행복’ 또는 그냥 ‘복’이라는 단어로 바꾸어도 완전히 맞는 말이다. 이사악은 아버지에 의해 거의 죽었다 억지로 살아났고, 야곱은 야바위보다 더 지독한 사기 행각을 통해 형 대신 아버지에 의하여 축복을 받았지만 결국 축복을 실현시키기 위해서는 독하기 독한 모진 고생을 해야 했다. 요셉도 비슷한 초년 사주를 타고 났고. 우리네 사는 것도 마찬가지. 대부분의 사람들이 일생 고통의 늪 속에서 허우적거리며 간혹 짧은 순간 즐겁기도 하고 기쁘기도 하고 그런 것이지 뭐 대단한 게 있다고 행운이니, 행복이니 하는지. 모든 사람은 축복을 받고 태어날 수 있지만 결국 길게 축복을 누리는 인간은 극소수에 그치는 것도 모자라, 그것도 다른 사람들이 보기에 축복이지 본인들은 지옥의 유황불 속인지, 그 속을 어떻게 아는가? 이런 형태의 축복, 남자가 엘로힘에게 들은 속삭임을 만은 간단하게 “그건 운명”이라고 퉁 치고 나간다.
하여튼 우르를 떠난 남자의 후손이 책의 주인공 요셉이 맞긴 맞는데, ‘그 남자’가 우리가 알고 있는 유대인의 조상 아브라함 비슷하지만, 천만의 말씀, 이름만 비슷하고 남자와 요셉의 사이엔 최소 20대, 약 600년 터울이 난단다. 그러니 증조부라 볼 수 없다는 것이 토마스 만의 주장. 작가는 창세기를 일종의 연대기로 여기고, 그것도 이스라엘 사람들이 쓴 연대기라서 그들의 조상이 행한 일을 간혹 터무니없이 미화한 측면이 많다는 시각에 입각해 적어도 2미터 이상 거리두기를 유지한다. 내가 주장하는 것도 마찬가지다. 역사는 이긴 자의 것이라고? 웃기지 말아라. 역사는 기록한 자들의 것이다.
한 가지 예로 야곱이 장인 라반의 집에서 25년(성서에는 20년)에 걸친 종살이를 끝내고 큰 부를 얻어 다시 가나안으로 향하다가 작은 무역도시 세겜의 옆에 장막을 치고 몇 년을 거주할 때의 일을 들었다. 애초 부유하지만 작은 규모의 도시 세겜이 눈에 들어오자마자 레아가 낳은 맏이 르우벤을 비롯해 시므온과 레위, 빌하의 아들 단, 호리호리하고 날렵한 납달리, 힘은 세지만 우울한 성격의 유다, 이렇게 여섯 아들들이 처음부터 세겜을 치고 약탈을 도모했다가, 아버지한테 심하게 야단을 맞은 적이 있었다. 그래 도시와 계약을 맺고 평화로이 지내기를 4년. 언제나 사이가 좋을 수 있나 어디. 그래 토착민과의 관계가 조금씩 원만해지지 않을 즈음, 까탈스런 성격에 통풍을 앓고 있는 성주 하몰의 방탕한 아들 세겜(성의 이름과 같음)의 눈에 야곱의 유일한 딸 디나가 들어온다. 이 순간, 세겜의 모든 신경은 “예쁠 것도 없고 아무렇지도 않은 사철 발 벗은” 디나 하나에게만 집중이 되어, 급기야 아버지 하몰이 아픈 몸을 이끌고 야곱의 장막에 가 청혼을 하기에 이른다.
야곱은 뭐 그럴 수 있겠다 싶었는데, 아들들이 세겜은 이미 본처가 있는 몸인데 어찌 야곱의 외동딸을 첩으로 보낼 수 있느냐면서 펄펄 뛰며 반대한다. 야곱도 아들들의 마음속에 뭔가 있음을 짐작했지만 아이들 이야기가 틀리지 않아 청을 물리칠 수밖에. 그랬더니 이번엔 세겜 본인이 장막을 방문해 무엇이든지 원하는 것으로 사례를 할 터이니 제발 디나를 달라고 요구하는 것도 일언지하에 거절한다. 그랬더니 어떻게 했느냐고? 약탈했지 뭐. 어느 날 몰래 전방 주시하다가 시계에 디나가 포착되자마자 잽싸게 보쌈해 집어와 할렘에 넣어놓고 그날로 동침해버리고 말았다. 며칠 후, 세겜이 다시 장막을 방문해 여차저차해서 여차저차 됐으니 그저 넓으신 아량을 바란다고 넙죽 엎드리니 이걸 죽여 살려? 이미 디나는 남의 처가 된 후. 이때 아들들이 요구하기를, 지참금을 받기엔 우리도 충분하게 부자인 것은 당신이 보는 바와 같으니 지금부터 사흘째가 되는 날, 우리와 같은 신을 모시겠다는 증표로 성 안의 모든 남자들에게, 늙었거나 젊었거나, 어리거나를 따지지 말고 반드시 돌칼을 써서 할례를 하라고 요구한다.
생각 짧은 세겜. 이크, 이런 횡재라니. 돈 한 푼 안 들이고 어여쁜(어여쁘지 않다고 책에 수없이 나온다. 레아를 닮으면 예쁠 수 없다고, 그저 자기 눈에 그렇게 보이는 거다.) 리나를 영원히 얻을 수 있다니 이게 웬 떡이냐, 하고 성에 들어가 사흘째가 되자마자 모든 남자들을 광장에 모아놓고, 바지 내려!를 외친다. 근데 할례를 하면, 당시엔 항생제도 없지, 소염제도 없어서 더욱 곤란했을 터인데, 움직임이 영 자유롭지 못하다. 어딘지 아시지? 쓸모없는 껍데기 잘라낸 곳이 따갑고 쓰라려서. 그렇게 해놓고 나흘째 되는 날, 야곱의 여섯 아들이 병사들을 몰고 야곱의 딸 리나를 구출하겠다는 명분으로 세겜 성에 쳐들어가 성주(는 자기 성질을 이기지 못해 분해 저절로 자연사했고), 성주 아들 세겜, 이집트 파견군 대장 베서-케-바스테트 등 거의 모든 남자들을 도륙내고 온갖 보물을 약탈해 야곱에게 바친다.
창세기에 나오는 대목하고 큰 그림을 비슷하지만 디테일로 가면 영 다르다. 이런 것이 바로 연대기, 역사는 기록하는 사람의 것이라는 증거. 이 책은 야곱이 아름다운 엄마 리브가의 지시를 핑계로 쌍둥이 형 에사오를 대신해 아버지의 축복을 받는 장면부터 다시 벧엘 언덕에 도착할 때까지를 자신의 해석으로 그리고 있다. 물론 자신은 간혹 연대기라는 말을 쓰지만 문학 작품이 처음부터 끝까지 시대별로 쓰게 되면 재미가 덜한 법, 토마스 만은 벧엘, 또는 베델의 성스러운 나무 성수에 나신으로 기대 몽상에 빠진 요셉의 상태를 묘사하는 것으로 시작한다. 위대한 작가 가운데 한 명으로 꼽히는 토마스 만답게 특정한 행위가 뒤에 벌어질 다른 행위에 연결, 즉 인과 관계로 이어지는, 또는 이어지게 하는 장치가 대단히 인상 깊다.
이거 명작 맞다. 첫 번째 책 <야곱 이야기>만 읽어봐도 알겠다. 그러나 읽기는 그리 쉽지 않다.
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골드문트 2020-08-26 공감(16) 댓글(4)
실재와 상상력
토마스 만은 분명 이야기꾼이다.
그는 실재로부터 이야깃거리를 따오되 거기에 무한한 상상력을 쏟아 붓는다.
그는 분명 리얼리스트이다.
이 작품 역시 기존 소설들과 어긋나지 않는다.
그의 동료 작가들이 이미 현실을 넌지시 밀어두었지만 그는 머나먼 곳으로까지 가서 현실을 되찾는다.
Thomas Mann(1875-1955)
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파고세운닥나무 2009-08-16 공감(3) 댓글(0)
노벨문학상 받은 대작가다운 소설
요즘 재밌게 읽고 있는 책이다. 마이산으로 잘 알려진 토마스 만의 장편소설이다. 모두 6권으로 되어있다. 1권은 야곱 이야기로 서문 형식을 취하고 있다. 대가운 글솜씨와 성경과 고대신화 등을 능숙하게 다루고 있다.
낭만인생 2013-07-01 공감(0) 댓글(0)
[요셉과 그 형제들1]
2.5
토마스 만의 역작이라고 거창하게 소개되어 있습니다. 오랫동안 쓴 책이라네요. 이게 1권인데(총7권) 판형이 좀 작지만 아무튼 650페이지나 됩니다. 그중에서 역작답게 서론이 75 페이지 가까이 됩니다.
서론이든 본문이든 특징은 하나입니다.
'주절주절'
작가는 마음대로 주어진 자료(성경밖에 없습니다. 당시엔 대부분이 구전으로 이야기가 전달되었고 한 가족의 이야기를 남이 알고 있을 필요도 없으니 성경 외에는 다른 기록이 없지요.)를 재해석해서 이 글을 지었습니다. 많은 오류가 섞여있는데 너무 많아서 일일이 지적할 필요도 없습니다. 아, 해석이 잘못 되었다는 게 아니라 내용 자체를 다 이해하지 못하고 있다는 것입니다. 아마 저자의 신앙심(?)이 깊지 않았던 것 같습니다. 뭐 목사님이나 신부님들도 간혹 가다가 잘못 이해하고 있는 것을 노출하니 작가가 좀 틀리는 것은 별 문제는 안됩니다. 아무튼 열심히 새로운 글을 써냈습니다. 실제로 얼마 안되는 길이의 자료에서 이렇게 엄청나게 방대한 소설을 만들어 낸 것으로도 칭찬할 만합니다. 다만 앞에서도 언급했듯이 주절주절 중언부언하였기 때문에 점수가 낮습니다. 어쩌면, 그래서 한번도 우리말로 번역이 안되었던 것인지도 모르겠네요. 2권을 읽을까 말까 고민중입니다. 아직 안 빌렸으니 빌릴까 말까가 옳은 표현이겠습니다. 순서는 요셉과 야곱의 회상이 겹치는 형식입니다. 당연히 소설이니 연대순으로 하면 재미가 덜하겠죠. (결국 안 빌리기로 하였습니다. 혹 모르겠습니다. 정 읽을 게 없어지면 다시 빌려 볼 지.)
『요셉과 그 형제』(요세후와 그 교제, 독 : Joseph und seine Brüder )는 토마스 맨 의 소설. 구약 성서의 요셉 의 이야기를 대장편으로 만든 작품으로, 「야곱 이야기」(1933년) 「젊은 요셉」(1934년) 「이집트의 요셉」(1936년) 「기르는 사람 요셉」(1943년) 4부로 이루어진다. 나치 정권하의 독일에서 망명을 끼워 18년에 걸쳐 서류되었다. 요셉과 그 아버지 야곱의 관계를 축으로, 프로이트 심리학을 원용하면서 인류의 화해와 휴머니즘의 주제를 다루고 있으며, 배경에는 나치의 사상, 특히 로젠베르크의 『20세기 신화』에 항 할 의도가 있었다.
착상은 1923년까지 거슬러 올라 올해 겨울에 아는 화가 헤르만 에버스로부터 요셉을 소재로 한 화집에 단문을 붙이도록 의뢰된 것이 그 계기였다. 의뢰받은 밤, 이미 어렸을 때부터 친해지고 있던 요셉의 이야기를 읽고 마음을 움직이는 것과 동시에, 괴테가 자전 『시와 진실』의 한 구절에서 이 이야기를 접하고 너무 짧지만, 그러므로 세부 사항을 보충 한다고 한다 유혹에 몰려가는 것을 쓰고 있었던 것을 기억했다. 1925년 3월에는 이집트·지중해 여행도 실시해 신화학, 고대사, 종교사의 자료를 읽어 면밀한 아래 준비를 한 뒤 1926년 12월에 집필이 개시되었다. 1933년 3월에는 나치에 압수된 뮌헨의 집에서 딸 에리카가 '요셉'의 원고를 목숨을 돌려 구출하고 있다. 제4부 집필 개시까지의 중단기에는 「와이마르의 롯데」(1939년)를 썼고, 마지막 제4부는 맨의 미국 망명 동안, 스웨덴에 망명하고 있던 피셔사로부터 간행되었다 .
젊은 야곱은 삼촌 라반에게 몸을 대고, 따뜻한 경영 수완을 발휘해, 삼촌 일가를 풍기는 동시에, 자신은 그 이상으로 부를 쌓아, 가족이나 노예도 얻고 25년 후에 고향에 돌아왔다. 그 경위를 구약성서는 『창세기』에서 22페이지(제27장부터 35장)를 걸쳐 이야기하고 있지만, 토마스 맨은 약 300페이지에 걸쳐 상세히 설명하고 있다.
젊은 야곱은 눈이 나쁜 아버지 이삭을 속이고 쌍둥이 형 에사우가 얻을 것이다 축복을 빼앗았다. 에사우의 분노를 피하기 위해 야곱은 팔레스타인의 집을 벗어나 유프라테스 강 상류 지역의 마을 하란 성 밖에 사는 백부 라반의 집으로 몸 하나로 갔다. 라반은 처음 야곱을 노인으로 고용하고 양을 돌보거나 농사를 짓기로 결정했다. 그 시작에, 야곱은 자신을 높이 팔고자 하고, 라반은 무일물로 굴러 온 야곱을 사려고 하고, 이야기가 붙은 곳에서 계약서 작성을 위해 성벽의 마을 안의 법원에 간다. 시작의 협상은 다음과 같이 이루어진다.
야곱 "나는 원래 목자이기 때문에 양을 길들이는 방법을 알고 있고, 잘 일할 수 있을 것입니다. 도 서 있지 않는 인간이 되자 등이라고는 생각하지 않았습니다 "라반 "좋아.
" 나에게는 합리적인 것이고, 나에게는 그것을 잃지 않을 것입니다. 내일은 그것을 계약서로하자
. 했다. 이를 이용함으로써 수로 소유자에게 지금까지 지불했던 고액의 사용료를 절약할 수 있게 되었다. 거기서 야곱과 라반은 계약 갱신의 토론을 했다.
라반 「너는 내게, 이걸로 한 달이 한번 쏟아지게 되었는데... 하고 있는 임금을 지불하고 있다.너의 덕도 있어 물을 발견할 수 있어 물이 솟고 있는 그 구멍을 점토로 긁어, 물을 통하는 통이나 벽돌로 만들기 시작하고 있다.그리고 연못도 하나 파는 것 그리고 그 연못의 구멍의 크기도 측정했고, 정원도 만들려고 하면, 일도 많아져, 너의 팔의 힘 이외에 아직 소사를 고용해, 그 소사들에게 음식이나 입는 것 하루에 8 세라의 곡물을 지불하지 않으면 안됩니다. 너는 지금까지 육친으로서의 마음으로부터, 우리의 계약에 의해 무보상으로 일해 왔다.그러나, 어떤 것일까, 우리는 새로운 계약을 맺기로 하자. 고용 된 소사들에게는 임금을 지불하고 조카의 너에게는 임금을 지불하지 않는다. 사라질 것입니다. 그렇다면 너의 주문을 말하고 싶다. 다른 소사들에게 지불하는 임금은 너에게도 지불 할 계획이다. 와 같은 수의 년간 여기에서 일해 주고, 나의 밭이 휴경기에 들어가, 흙이 놀고, 파종도 수확도 하지 않을 때까지 이 나의 곳에서 일하는 계약을 해 주면, 너에게는 다른 소사들에게 받는 임금보다 조금 분발해도 좋다.
1번째와 2번째도 그 후에도 계약이 바뀔 때마다 야곱과 라반은 성벽 내 마을의 재판관에게 가서 합의 내용이 점토판에 “왕의 이름에 의해 그렇게 찬성되었다. 당사자 중 어느 한 사람이 계약서의 한 통을 넘겼다. 했다. 우리는 기독교의 수용 모두 ‘구약성경’을 배우고 유대민족은 ‘계약의 백성’이라고 가르쳐 왔다. 이 책이 이야기하고 있는 것은 메소포타미아 팔레스타인 이집트 사이를 오가는 아브라함 이삭 야곱 요셉의 일족은 이 시대에는 소수파로, 거대한 도시 문명과 마르두크와 이슈타르의 성전을 세워 한 사람들 사이에서 새로운 '보이지 않는 신'을 계시된 부족이라는 것이다. 사회생활에서 아무것도 계약에 의하여 규정한다는 습관은 이 지역의 사람들에게 있어서의 기본적인 공통인식이다.
또 다른 주목해야 할 점은 야곱과 라반 모두 인간적인 친근함이 아니라 각각의 이익을 최대화하는 경제적 타산에 의해 경영상의 협력을 아끼지 않았다는 것이다.
라반의 저택에서도 밭에서도, 어떠한 다양한 일이나 희망에 넘치는 바쁜 것이 갑자기 시작되어 파고 두드리거나 경작하거나 굶주리는 소란이 시작된 것이다! 라반은 자금을 빌려 경영을 늘리고 거기에 필요한 구입을 했다. ···(라반은 마을의 금융업자로부터 자금을 융통해 주었다). 신규로 고용한 3명의 소사의 급료를 지불해, 그 3명을 먹이는 것만으로도 차입금이 필요했다. 그 세 명의 노예들은 마을에 살고 그런 임대를 하고 있는 남자 소유의 노예들로 야곱의 오더로 일을 했다. 야곱은 자신도 일을 도우면서 3명의 육체 노동만을 감독 겸 현장장으로 내다봤다. … 만은 생각하지 않았다. 오히려 중매상인, 자유로운 독립상인이라는 입장에서 거래를 진행하고, 현금으로 구입하는 경우에도, 관습의 물건 교환을 하는 경우도, 저속한, 교묘한, 허리가 낮은, 변설의 서, 사람 좋아하는 상인으로서 행동하고, 그때마다 언제나 자신의 어딘가에 많거나 적은 이초를 거두는 모든 것을 마음껏 하고 있었다. 그러므로 공식적으로 라반의 가축을 돌보는 전책을 맡게 되기 이전부터, 정말은 이미 조금만 자신의 가축으로서 양이나 염소의 무리를 소유하게 되어 있었다. … 리초를 낳는 일을 하지 않고 있어도 좋을까. 야곱은 그런 어리석은 일을 해치는 유혹에 빠진 적은 한 번도 없었다. 야곱이 라반을 속이고, 라반을 배신하고, 상전을 은밀히 뒤틀었다고 생각해서는 안 된다. 라반은 야곱의 카라쿠리노를 알고 있었다. 라반은 야곱이 하는 일의 명료한 개개인으로는, 구각을 늘어뜨리고 말 그대로 한쪽 눈을 찔렀다. 라반은 그렇게 하고 라반 자신이 그때까지 서투른 손으로 이익을 낸 것보다 거의 벌써 더 많은 이익에 붙어 있다는 것을 알고 있었고, 야곱을 두려워하고, 야곱의 일을 크게 보는 이유가 있었다 . ··· 야곱은 라반을 향해 이 점에 대해 조금도 사양하지 않고 확실히 경고했다.
"당신이, 주인, 당신의 일의 거래로 내 곳곳에 들어오는 겸손한 이초 중 하나에 눈을 감고, 그것을 급히 떼어내고, 당신의 소사들의 한 사람입니다. 일의 힘의 이익을 모두 네 곳에 넣지 않고 나를 하얀 눈으로 보게 되면 이 가슴 속의 영혼이 위로 되어 버리고 체내에 머무르고 있는 축복의 힘이 안 된다. 너의 일도 내 손으로 잘 되지 않을 것이다.··· 내 축복이 너에게도 도움이 되었고, 내가 너에게 빠져 나오지 않고 섬기는 것을 정말로 원한다면, 나에게 보상이 미소 지어진다. 나를 자위해주지 않으면 내 영혼은 움푹 들어가, 잠들어 버리고, 가지고 있는 축복이 당신을 위해 되어주지 않게 될 것입니다
. 라고 말했지만, 라반과 야곱과의 두 사람 사이에 그런 것이 두 번 3번 있었던 후에는, 라반은 아무것도 불평하지 말고, 야곱에게 하고 싶도록 시켜 두는 것을 선택했다.
오늘날의 흐름에 따르면 라반은 운이 좋은 자본가이며 야곱은 유능한 CEO라는 것이다. 공통이익을 위해 최대한 파이를 크게 하는 것과 내심은 어색할 정도로 속이고 자신의 몫을 극대화하려고 한다. 곤씨는, 이 중동인의 직계의 정신을 계승하고 있다고 생각된다.
‘우리와 난지’가 규정하는 책임의식
‘구약성경’에 그려진 이스라엘 사람들의 또 다른 특징은 하나님과 자신 사이에 상대적인 정신을 견지하고 있다는 것이다. 친척의 백부·조카의 관계에서도 자신을 양보하지 않지만, 그것이 하나님과의 관계에도 관여하고 있는 것 같다.
아브라함은 하나님 앞에서 생활을 계속하고 하나님의 객관적인 친근함을 느끼면서 영혼을 깨끗하게 하고 있었다. 하나님과 아브라함은 두 사람이었고, 우리와 헛소리였지만, 이 함정은 역시 '우리'라고 자칭하고, 다른 아브라함을 '난지'라고 불렀다. ··· 아브라함은 하나님 속에 흡수되어 버려, 하나님과 하나가 되어, 이제 아브라함이 아니게 되어 버리겠다고는 생각하지 않고, 하나님에 대해 매우 건강한 태도로 결연히 아브라함으로 계속되었다 ――하나님으로부터 엄청나게 떨어져 서 있던 것은 물론이고, 아브라함은 하나의 인간이었고, 흙에 불과했다. 그러나 아브라함은 하나님을 알게 됨으로써 하나님과 연결을 맺고 하나님이라는 숭고한 무지와 함께 존재함으로써 신성하게 되어 서 있었다. 그러한 기초 위에 서서 하나님은 아브라함과 계약을, 당사자의 어느 쪽에게도 약속에 맞춘 계약을 맺었다.
4명의 고객이 이것이 도움이 되었다고 생각합니다.
===
Goodreads Review
Joseph und seine Brüder #1-4
Joseph and His Brothers
Thomas Mann
,
John E. Woods
(translator)
4.42
1,873 ratings177 reviews
This remarkable new translation of the Nobel Prize-winner’s great masterpiece is a major literary event.
Thomas Mann regarded his monumental retelling of the biblical story of Joseph as his magnum opus. He conceived of the four parts–The Stories of Jacob, Young Joseph, Joseph in Egypt, and Joseph the Provider–as a unified narrative, a “mythological novel” of Joseph’s fall into slavery and his rise to be lord over Egypt. Deploying lavish, persuasive detail, Mann conjures for us the world of patriarchs and pharaohs, the ancient civilizations of Egypt, Mesopotamia, and Palestine, and the universal force of human love in all its beauty, desperation, absurdity, and pain. The result is a brilliant amalgam of humor, emotion, psychological insight, and epic grandeur.
Now the award-winning translator John E. Woods gives us a definitive new English version of Joseph and His Brothers that is worthy of Mann’s achievement, revealing the novel’s exuberant polyphony of ancient and modern voices, a rich music that is by turns elegant, coarse, and sublime.
--front flap
1492 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 1943
8,047 people want to read
About the author
Thomas Mann
1,337 books 3,954 followers
Thomas Mann was a German novelist, short story writer, social critic, philanthropist, essayist, and Nobel Prize laureate in 1929, known for his series of highly symbolic and ironic epic novels and novellas,
noted for their insight into the psychology of the artist and the intellectual.
His analysis and critique of the European and German soul
used modernized German and Biblical stories, as well as the ideas of Goethe, Nietzsche, and Schopenhauer.
His older brother was the radical writer Heinrich Mann, and three of his six children, Erika Mann, Klaus Mann and Golo Mann, also became important German writers. When Hitler came to power in 1933, Mann fled to Switzerland. When World War II broke out in 1939, he emigrated to the United States, from where he returned to Switzerland in 1952.
Thomas Mann is one of the best-known exponents of the so-called Exilliteratur.
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Exilliteratur - From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
German Exilliteratur (German pronunciation: [ɛˈksiːl.lɪtəʁaˌtuːɐ̯], exile literature) is the name for works of German literature written in the German diaspora by refugee authors who fled from Nazi Germany, Nazi Austria, and the occupied territories between 1933 and 1945. These dissident writers, poets and artists, many of whom were of Jewish ancestry and/or held anti-Nazi beliefs, fled into exile in 1933 after the Nazi Party came to power in Germany and after Nazi Germany annexed Austria by the Anschluss in 1938, abolished the freedom of press, and started to prosecute authors and ban works.
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Community Reviews
4.42
Vit Babenco
1,383 reviews
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May 1, 2022
Like father like son… Joseph is young but he is as smart and sly as his father…
One fine day he dreams a dream…
“And Joseph dreamed a dream, and he told it his brethren: and they hated him yet the more.
And he said unto them, Hear, I pray you, this dream which I have dreamed:
For, behold, we were binding sheaves in the field, and, lo, my sheaf arose, and also stood upright; and, behold, your sheaves stood round about, and made obeisance to my sheaf.” Genesis 37:5-7
No one is a prophet in one’s own homeland…
Therefore, his brothers are indignant and disgusted… They punish Joseph and sell him as a slave into Egypt… And there smart and sly Joseph has his share of ups and downs…
One fine day Pharaoh dreams a dream…
“And it came to pass at the end of two full years, that Pharaoh dreamed: and, behold, he stood by the river.
And, behold, there came up out of the river seven well favoured kine and fatfleshed; and they fed in a meadow.
And, behold, seven other kine came up after them out of the river, ill favoured and leanfleshed; and stood by the other kine upon the brink of the river.
And the ill favoured and leanfleshed kine did eat up the seven well favoured and fat kine. So Pharaoh awoke.” Genesis 41:1-4
No one is a prophet in one’s own homeland…
Therefore, Pharaoh summons Joseph… And Joseph explains Pharaoh’s dream… Pharaoh magnanimously awards smart and sly Joseph divers favours… So Joseph enjoys wealth and glory…
It is cunning that allows one to rise above others.
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Fionnuala
772 reviews
March 7, 2022
Goodreads tells me I'm already 2 books behind schedule in this 3rd month of 2022.
Yes, this giant book of 600000 words scattered across 1500 pages took me 70 days to read, but alas it counts for only 1 book added to my shelves, so I'm going to be behind schedule for a while.
However, Joseph And his Brothers, written over a period of 17 years, was originally 4 separate books, so I could argue that I'm ahead of schedule by 2 books!
If I'm getting into the nitty gritty of the numbers, I have to question if it really took me 70 days to read 1500 pages? The truth is, I didn't read this book on every 1 of those 70 days. Goodreads tells me I read 6 other books in between, so the number of days I opened up the full-sewn cloth binding of this book, and peered at its cream-wove pages, covered in tiny Stempfel-Garamond typeface, is more like 40.
70? 40? For heaven's sake, what is this obsession with counting, I hear you mutter.
Well, reader (by the way, there must have been 100 mentions of the word 'well' in this book, and many of those were indeed 'by the way' as in 'by the wayside'), the narrator, who is recounting the events several 1000 years after the time of their happening, plays with numbers a lot, adding on here, subtracting there. Just between ourselves, he admits he does it in order to give coherence to the age-old stories he has chosen to draw into the light—in fact, he implies with a wink that he does it for heaven's sake!
You see, he is very chatty, this narrator, and he indulges in witty asides to the reader every now and then (sometimes about the challenge of rendering faithfully the 'then' in the 'now' (feeling he has to allow for our modern sensibilities, so to speak)).
It is as if he takes to himself the line he gives Joseph when answering Jacob's complaint that Joseph's clever words sometimes splash over the rocks of truth, by claiming wit is by nature a messenger who goes back and forth.
That example is more or less to say that I enjoyed the narrator's wit and was ready to follow along with his clever narrative games, even when they splashed the rocks of truth, as it were. And since the 'truth' word has been mentioned, I want to confess that I would not have made it through the narrator's 600000 words were it not for the playfulness with which he narrates the variations of repetition that occur within the stories in this book.
Even with the playfulness, it seemed to take me a century to get through the 1st 3rd of the book (not helped by reading 6 other books on the side), and it was a mystery as to whether I'd ever reach the end—so unbearable did I find the sight of the huge wedge of pages left to read (though they lay to the right). The narrator would chide me for using the word 'unbearable' lightly, so let's forget I said it and allow Time to take me (for it did, as seasoned readers know it always does) to page 620, where, after a long slow journey through the desert, the narrative reached the Nile, and Joseph boarded a ship called 'Sparkling with Speed'. The ship sailed south along the river, that is to say upstream, which often means travelling at a slow pace, but in that part of Egypt, the north wind is frequent so the boat truly did sparkle with speed as it descended further into Egypt. And the miracle is that my reading pace sparkled along with it! The longer I spent reading, the shorter it seemed, and the weight of pages listed to the left faster than I could ever have dreamed.
Before I knew it, well, on page 1168, to be exact, Joseph was standing before Pharaoh interpreting his famous dream about the fat and lean cows. Joseph forecast 7 years of plenty followed by 7 years of famine (or was that 5 fat years and 5 lean ones (but the narrator says let's not look too closely at those numbers)).
You might mutter that I've sped too swiftly through the pages between 620 and 1168, eg, the ones that traced how Joseph's story echoed older stories such as Gilgamesh courted by Ishtar, or Adam courted (indirectly) by the serpent, just as Jacob's life echoed older stories too, while of course both characters's stories foretold a significant later story most of you know very well—which more than justifies my abridgement, you'd have to accept.
So what did remain to be told in the slim right hand wedge of my book after page 1168—the final 332 pages, to be exact? Well, and it is particularly fitting to use that word now because those three hundred odd pages tell of how Joseph came face to face with the 10 brothers who threw him into the well by the wayside 25 years before (or was that 35?), and they also tell of Jacob descending into Egypt with his entire 'Israel' family, all 70 of them, though the narrator is unsure whether that number included Jacob himself, or if the women of the family were counted in the seventy, or what age Jacob was at the time, 90 or 100 or even 130, an indescribably old man in any case, who had to be carried all the way. And incidentally, the narrator uses the word 'indescribable' a lot, yet what amazed me was that I could see clearly everything he recounted in this long saga full of oppositions, light versus dark, the upper world versus the lower one, male versus female, smooth versus hairy, brother against brother, but also a story of brothers uniting, male traits merging with female, the lower world of Egypt rescuing the upper one of Israel, and darkness moving towards light.
Not to mention the pages of my book which finally moved from the right to the left.
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103 comments
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Rod
102 reviews
58 followers
June 4, 2014
★★★★★★
What a truly amazing accomplishment this is, and as I say that it occurs to me that I am referring not just to Mann's writing it, but to my finishing reading it. 1492 pages + introductions, that's my high water mark, the biggest single book I've ever read by a considerable margin.
A daunting book, no doubt. It's also beautiful, erudite, enthralling, one of the best books I've read in my lifetime.
Okay, so this is one big damn book. Intimidating, right? A turgid Teutonic trudge through the second half of the book of Genesis, bloated to a gargantuan 1500 pages. One might think so, but luckily the pleasures contained therein are directly proportional to its immense size. This is Mann's masterpiece, not The Magic Mountain, estimable though that book is. Of course, I haven't read them all, merely this one, Magic Mountain, and Buddenbrooks, so how can I possibly make that determination? Simply because it is the God's honest truth. This is Mann in top form here, the necromancer breathing life into the lungs and infusing warm, red blood into the crusty, dusty stories of people who died long ago, assuming they ever existed (I'm not going to make that presumption). It's an historical novel and a novel of ideas (BIG ideas, perhaps the biggest), but at its heart it is a family drama, more Buddenbrooks than The Magic Mountain.
And what a family are these sons of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. You either know the stories by heart or you don't. I didn't, at least not very well. I had fuzzy memories of childhood Sunday School classes, learning about Joseph's "coat of many colors" and Jacob's cheating his brother out of his inheritance, but really, I was just there for the cookies, inadequately sweetened Kool-Aid, and a short game of kickball outside, so a Biblical scholar I was not. However, I think unfamiliarity with the subject matter is actually a boon to your enjoyment of the book. Not that intimate Old Testament knowledge would necessarily be a detriment, because as Mann continually reminds the reader, everybody knows the story and how it ends, with the subtle implication of "Yes, but not told by me you haven't, so sit down, shut up, and enjoy." Those that are very devout may find that the text conflicts with their own personal dogma, so there could be trouble there. And on the opposite end of the spectrum, there are those that are repulsed by the very idea of reading something based on The Bible (ptooey!).
These two extremes may just be a lost cause. On the other hand, if you're like me and you just have some vague, half-remembered notions of messes of pottage and ladies turning into pillars of salt, you like historical novels, and you're interested in the myths and legends of ancient peoples of various creeds, you're probably right in the sweet spot.
This is a marvelous book that is going right to the tippy-top of my favorites list. It's so rich and engaging that as I reached the magnificent, very moving conclusion, I felt a profound sense of loss because I was leaving this world that I had felt a part of for so long. Until it gradually works it's way out of my system, I'm afraid Joseph and His Brothers is going to ruin other books for me for a little while. It's one of those books that I'll treasure the experience of forever. Read it! Read it, you fools!
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Lee Klein
789 reviews
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November 2, 2022
A six-star masterpiece of authority, erudition, execution, insight, wisdom, relevance, characterization, and epic adventure. Move over, The Magic Mountain -- this one deserves your reputation and readership. Despite 1492 dense "Everyman's Library" pages, this one is much more engaging, moving, thematically hefty, and its incorporation of ancient history, mythology, and DETAIL more often boggles than numbs the mind.
There's an older translation with more biblical language, but this one by Woods flows like Tolstoy's take on a bit of the Old Testament. It's Mann, though: you can tell by the gentle irony, massive doses of description, ridiculous depth of knowledge, and of course the old man's authorial crush on his pretty boy proto-ubermensch, proto-Christ, super-Jew protagonist, Joseph.
The story as a whole suggests the story of Jesus, as well as the story of Osiris, but what I found more interesting was the subtle, intentionally ambiguous critique of Nazi Germany -- at times Joseph is the arrogant Aryan superman, at times his brothers are the brownshirts, at times Egypt is the aggressive expansionist empire.
Toward the end, the story suggests post-Depression-era New Deal programs and Soviet collectivism. Like all great lit, this one explicitly champions ambiguity.
Joseph is thrown into a well by his brothers -- a scene that rivals (maybe even surpasses) the one in The Magic Mountain when Hans is lost in the snow while skiing -- and sold into slavery, but it's all ultimately part of a playful "holy game" God plays on the brothers.
Beyond exceptional social, historical, and theological thematic stuff, Mann's storytelling skills are ridiculous. He's long-winded at times, sure. He says "in short" and then rips off a meaty summarizing paragraph. But he's so in control and does such an extraordinary job of orientating the reader I at least never felt lost, never wondered who was talking (I'm looking at you, Proust), always felt right there in the desert with soft-spoken Rueben with his column legs, cross-eyed Leah, Rachel with the beautiful eyes, little Benjamin, on and on.
So many characters, all of them with their reinforced distinguishing traits over several hundred pages. Very few women, most of them either idealized beautiful mother lovers or sultry and deceitful witch temptresses, but there are two freaking dwarves in this! DWARVES.
One even gets cudgeled by his master as things almost veer toward comedy. Especially toward the end, it's good clean fun when the narrator more often directly addresses the reader, but all along you feel Mann leading you through the story, in absolute control of its every aspect, including giving it air and life.
Considering that this extrapolates a few opaque lines in the bible into 1492 pages written over 16 years coinciding with the rise/fall of the Third Reich -- considering that this monumental novel about some of the earliest Jews was written while Mann's country exterminated six million of their mid-20th century vintage and tried to take over the world -- this might be a prime example of high-lit heroic insurgency.
At times it reads like he's raising a huge middle finger and directing it at his tragically misguided homeland. But it's more than that. There's wisdom, instruction, even a few moments of magic, and hope that it's all part of God's plan, even the worldwide horror of WWII. Anyway, towering literary artistry to the nth degree. Considering how long it takes to read this one, the $40 hardback is totally worth it -- plus it comes with one of those snazzy built-in bookmark ribbons.
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32 comments
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Marc
3,030 reviews
1,023 followers
February 12, 2023
(re-editing of original review of 2015)
It took me three months to digest this gigantic work, 10 to 20 pages a day. So, inevitably notions like "monumental, epic, awesome" come to mind. Thomas Mann has developed the rather short Bible story about Isaac, Jacob and Joseph into 4 books, 1300 pages in total.
It’s the epic strength of the story and also the setting (especially ancient Egypt) that give this book its quality. Mann has written some really moving parts, most of all those about the interaction between Joseph and his father Jacob, and Jacob and his wife Rachel; and some parts were quite funny too, like Jacob becoming victim of his own cunning. In general, I was very impressed by the profile of Jacob, represented by Mann as a real patriarch. And also the theological framework (God expressing himself in the story of mankind, in mutual interdepence) was pretty much inspiring.
But Mann has put into the book some rather bizarre interpretations, as for instance the influence of Joseph on pharaoh Ikhnaton (suggesting that Joseph made him change his worship of the sun disc into something more monotheistic), and the Christological references (Joseph seeing his adventure in the pit and in the Egyptian prison as a kind of death and a prelude to resurrection); maybe it is just Mann’s way to add some irony, but to me the anachronisms were rather disagreeable. As lots of other readers I sometimes was exasperated by the very extensive way of writing and describing, with long, rather tiresome enumerations that add poorly to the story. Also Mann’s continuous toning down of his story (his own brand of irony?) is conflicting with the omniscient position of the author.
And then there is the character of Joseph; it took me a while to realize why I did not succeed in sympathizing with him (on the contrary). That was until Mann himself, around page 1000, characterized the actions of Joseph as rather arrogant, egocentric and without empathy. Mann adds we cannot but forgive Joseph because his actions are provoked by his certain belief he is blessed (by this father and by God), and destined, which makes everything he does and has to undergo into a part of a much broader, divine story. Well, at that point I knew: if I would come across Joseph in real life, I certainly would find him abhorrent and odious, like all people I meet that are 200% certain of their own convictions, their special part in history, no matter if it is on religious, philosophical, ideological or plainly materialistic grounds. Perhaps it's a kind of biblical irony when in the end not Joseph appears to be the chosen one, but the modest and sinful Juda.
I agree Mann has written a monumental work, but I cannot really sympathize with it, nor with his protagonist Joseph. I prefer the ever seeking, uncertain Hans Castorp of The Magic Mountain, still one of the most important books of the 20th Century!
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Jimmy
511 reviews
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December 11, 2013
I don't think I've ever read 1500 pages this quickly. The remarkable thing is that it was so easy. The writing pulled me along with a combination of great storytelling, philosophy, history, psychology, humor, character study, politics--basically everything I love mixed together perfectly. At times it felt like an adventure story. At other times like reading the encyclopedia if the encyclopedia were fun to read. Still other times I was moved to tears, my heart aching for these characters and their plights. The pages flew by. And all these pages for what? For telling a story that took up a measly few chapters in Genesis, a story I already knew from bible study long ago (although my memory is hazy in many parts). That's the thing though. The way Mann tells it, it doesn't matter if you know the story or not because that's the point of a myth--that it exists outside of time, and therefore it recurs... and every time as if for the first time.
In this book, Mann was able to do justice to that idea of recurrence, because he was able to bring out the humanity in the characters behind the story so that for the first time I could clearly see the complex psychologies, the cultural, historical, and/or personal reasons behind all of the surface action. (Nevermind if those reasons may not be the real ones, nobody knows for sure, what matters is that everything made so much sense to my reality that I believed them completely at the moment of their telling). By making these people real, Mann also reveals layers of moral ambiguity that wasn't in the original. He introduces us to these characters and their situations anew, and adds the necessary complexity to muddy the waters of simple Good vs. Evil.
And I don't mean he just humanizes the main characters, but also the minor characters. Characters like Tamar and Mai-Sakhme (a character who doesn't even have a name in the Bible, but was simply called the "keeper of the prison"), which I do not remember hearing about in bible study probably because 1. they are racy / sexy / violent stories 2. because often these characters are complex in a way that doesn't fit in and therefore are inconvenient or 3. there was just no need to expand into the backgrounds of characters that do not matter in the bigger scheme of God's plans (although there is reason enough for us, and for Mann, because we are more interested in humanity than divinity). Sometimes they are powerful/clever women, or sometimes they are good people who just happened to not believe in the God of the Bible. They don't fit into the "myth" in the way that it is traditionally told. It was amusing when I went back to read the Bible's version of Tamar's story: "And Judah said unto Onan, Go in unto thy brother's wife, and marry her, and raise up seed to thy brother." After reading Mann's version, I realized that that Bible passage is bending over backwards just to avoid giving the woman (Tamar) any agency. And because it's doing all these contortions, the logic of the story suffers; it makes no sense and never has (without seriously reading between the lines, which is what Mann does for us).
But Mann not only humanizes his characters, he also humanizes God. For isn't God the one character that Mann himself would relate to most, being afterall the God of this book? (That this God's name is Mann only makes it all the more delicious). By creating a world and breathing life into it with words, isn't he also implicated in this story as a co-author of these people's fates? So that humanizing God comes natural to him, and by plumbing into the depths of His psychology, Mann does Him justice, for His actions are often puzzling until you think of Him as faulty and therefore subject to analysis, scrutiny... even sympathy. Think of Him as motivated by a psychology no different than ours, by jealousies, insecurities, weaknesses, and self deceptions.
As you can see, Mann takes many liberties with these stories. Anyone with a fundamentalist faith in the literal truth of the Bible would probably have fits reading this. But we need not concern ourselves with those people, since those who only have faith in the literal word have no faith at all, seeing as God himself isn't literal but is the epitome of figurative truth, a divine metaphor if you will (note: this is just my opinion, not Mann's). Mann has no qualms about making up new characters (I'm pretty sure there were no midgets in the original version, but I'm glad they're here and by the way, those midgets?--though a bit more two dimensional than the other characters, they had me cracking up uncontrollably on many occasions), new situations, even correcting the Bible. He will often come right out and acknowledge that the Bible says one thing, but that what really happened was more fuzzy/hard to define clearly, and that it was streamlined over the years for certain understandable reasons.
I found the voice of this narrator, in his sobering adherence to logic and common sense, his knowledge of the different political situations at the time, the historical context, and the customs and people of that region, to be strangely comforting. I trusted him more because I was able to see who all the other gods were that other tribes at the time were worshipping and how this tied in politically to whatever larger systems were going on in the region. I felt secure in his all-knowing-ness, even though I too knew that this was a game, much like Joseph's Holy Game. No one is being tricked here, in this game of fiction, although we are all at the same time being tricked, willingly. For don't we all know that there is no possible way for Mann to know all these facts down to the minutest of details? But that is exactly what he provides for us. Instead of 7 years passed as some accounts would have it, Mann gives us page after page (and most of them quite entertaining) of years passing! And we drink it up. For the suspension of belief required in reading a novel is not that different from the one that inspires religious nutcases to mouth such delusions as "everything happens for a reason" and "God works in mysterious ways."
It is now time for me to go all apeshit on certain main themes of the book, and my theories on those themes. Here is where you should tune out before it's too late, if you don't care for this kind of stuff.
And here, to be sure, what we have to say flows into a mystery in which our own information gets lost--the mystery, that is, of an endless past in which every origin proves to be just an illusory stopping place, never the final goal of the journey, and its mystery is based on the fact that by its very nature the past is not a straight line, but a sphere. The line knows no mystery. Mystery lies in the sphere. But a sphere consists of complements and correspondences, a doubled half that closes to a unity; it consists of an upper and a lower, a heavenly and an earthly hemisphere in complement with one another as a whole, so that what is above is also below and whatever may happen in the earthly portion is repeated in the heavenly, the latter rediscovering itself in the former. This corresponding interchange of two halves that together build the whole of a closed sphere is analogous to another kind of objective change: rotation. The sphere rolls; that is the nature of the sphere. In an instant top is bottom and bottom top, if one may even speak in the generalities of bottom and top in such a case. It is not just that the heavenly and the earthly recognize themselves in each other, but thanks to spherical rotation the heavenly also turns into the earthly, the earthly into the heavenly, clearly revealing, indeed yielding the truth that gods can become human and that, on the other hand, human beings can become gods again.
To tell a story is to inevitably deal with the passage of time, either explicitly or implicitly. The best storytellers, in my opinion, do both at the same time.
I already mentioned the implicit bit a little earlier, how Mann has a, let's say, natural predisposition for piling detail on top of detail, but in such a fully realized world that it is almost never boring. What happens in those seven years is told in details, tangents, smaller inconsequential stories. But what matters is that the pages are there, as a placeholder for time passing. I felt the journey that Joseph made with the merchants that took seven times seventeen days (or thereabouts), I felt those long days viscerally as I read page after page before finally seeing the outskirts of Egypt on the horizon. I'm reminded of certain passages in Moby Dick that seemed to me to reflect time's "slabbiness" (my word) or even the section of 2666 with all the deaths (though nothing in this book even comes close to that type of exhausting-ness). The surprising thing is that even though those pages are there and its passage of time is registered in my consciousness, those pages were in no way fillers. They were entertaining and full of interesting tidbits so that the words almost leapt up to greet my eyes, to borrow a phrase from Eliezer.
As for the explicit mention of time... Musil had his pendulum, swinging from one extreme to the other with no stops in between. Mann's conception of time as a sphere is not that different. And the idea of time being cyclic in itself is not all that earth-shattering. What's interesting for me here is his blending of heaven and earth, of how Gods become human and humans become God (yes, there are many references to Jesus in this book, if you were wondering). One must also think of the storyteller's parallel mission--of making the mythic historic and the historic mythic.
Simply by choosing Jacob and Joseph's story, Mann deals with mythic time, by which I mean a story that exists outside of time, a timeless story, and one that necessarily repeats over and over like a motif with slight variations at each iteration. Mann makes us focus on a story which (we are continually reminded) is part of a much larger work, in which stories before and after it are echoed time and again... that this is necessarily a story in the middle of a story, as all stories should be, without beginning or end.
By creating a narrative echo chamber, he reminds us that these are not isolated events, but are part of a series that conform to a mythic template. Even his characters echo these stories to each other, for they are actors in this tradition and must know their roles. He echos things in the past (Abram, Noah) and in the future (Jesus) and by so doing implies that it doesn't matter which story we are telling because we are telling all the stories of the bible (as well as other mythic traditions) at the same time. It feels almost fractal in nature--you can zoom in or out as much as you like, you are still going to get the same general shape. The small story is echoed in the large story and vice versa.
But here the sphere turns and the mythic turns historic. Mann places the myth (which is timeless) in a very specific reality. To be sure, these stories were set in a specific time all along, but not with such detail to the facts of chronology, not with such painstaking concern for the illusion of verisimilitude. In a way, the original stories could have happened at any time. But Mann's insistence on taking these stories, which were previously in a vacuum, isolated to their own lessons only, and surrounding them in the sometimes inconvenient reality of culture, not just one culture but multiple cultures, clans, tribes, religions, sects, political groups, allows us to see that the things happening here are part of a much larger non homogenous real world, and other traditions/stories are happening in concert with what's central here, and each tradition sees itself as the center around which all others revolve.
At what point does flesh-and-blood become story, narrative, myth, and legend? And at what point does the sphere revolve yet again and from these mythic figures mere humans are spat out in all their complex and messy particularities?
germany
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Erik Graff
4,989 reviews
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1,088 followers
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September 27, 2015
Having developed a taste for Thomas Mann and a hobby reading modern reworkings of biblical themes, I was quite pleased to obtain a copy of the tetrology, Joseph and His Brothers, during the last semester in college. I was even more pleased during the reading of it.
Mann wrote Joseph during the rise of Nazism in his homeland, finishing it during his North American exile. One wonders how much the political experiences of his life during this period influenced the book with its themes of rejection, exile and return.
One thing is certain. Mann did his homework. The biblical period covered by the narrative is Genesis 27-50. This becomes ca. 1420-1320 BCE by his calculation and his representation of the times in the Middle East and Egypt is quite plausible. His representation of the Hebrew mythical imagination and tradition, however, is outstanding. The stories of the patriarchs come alive in their retelling of a story within a story.
Mann considered Joseph and His Brothers his crowning achievement. I strongly agree.
literature
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Aubrey
1,279 reviews
706 followers
December 9, 2015
4.5/5
For it is good, consoling, and useful that phrases of lamentation from the early days of beleaguered humanity are preserved and lie at the ready, suitable for later and present occasions as if made for them, in order to ease the pain of life to whatever extent words can ease it, so that one may make use of them and join one's suffering with ancient and ever-present pain.
I take religion seriously. My being an atheist doesn't mean I can't recognize the worth of belief's various forms, for when your brain tells you to kill yourself as often as mine does, the fact that history has countless communal mainstays of replenishment backed by ritual celebration and ethical paradigms with an eye on extending forevermore tells me many someones out there knew what they were doing. I do not believe in a higher power, but I was raised Catholic enough that I have the right to be married in one of the monotheism's churches if I so desire, and as a result I draw deeply from enculturated frameworks of appreciation for stained glass windows, choir music, and theological debate. Seeing as how a variation of my creed, a creed which in its older form took a number of centuries to say yes to the idea that my prescribed gender may indeed have souls, is being used as an excuse for forced public stripping and drone strikes, religious dialects are in my best interest.
We are easily moved to call some situation unbearable—it is the protest of fiercely outraged humanity, well intended and even beneficial for the person suffering. Yet such protest may easily also seem a bit ridiculous to someone whose reality is "unbearable."
The thing about this story that Mann stretched to nearly 1500 pages of epic is, it's about Jewish people. He wrote the first volume before fleeing Germany during the Antisemitism event of the century, so one would hope he had some sense of what it meant for him, someone who is not Jewish, to take up this Old Testament aka Torah aka what everyone thinks shitting on amounts as a clever critique of Christianity when really all you're doing is parading your bigotry story. It's not as simple as proclaiming the Bible is close to universal and so is fair game to anyone who has a mind to play off of it literature style. It's about this persecution of an ethnoreligious group of people who have been ghettoized and appropriated and filtered through tropes like witches and goblins literally for millenia. A good proportion of the world's non-Jewish population is familiar with the story of Joseph and his brothers, but does it know who it came from? Does it care?If you want the specifics of what passed by me as humanity and what paraded around as stereotype, see my updates.
He was not what is good, but what is all. And He was holy!
Reading this work is akin to stepping into a room full of conversation and having your attention caught by one particularly strident to the point of frolicking glee voice which is as busy generating material as it is contesting every previously brought up point in a history of arguments. I'm sure my MFA-believing prof would've keeled over at the hundreds of pages of introspection that made it quite clear that since everyone knows all the details about the journey it was going to enjoy taking its time thank you very much. Now, Mann's got a way with words and sentences and paragraphs and everything that probably immeasurably shaped my four year younger self's tastes when he got to me through The Magic Mountain. Four years later, that's what I was looking for, and in the first two volumes that mixed with a healthy dose of my beloved critically empathetic eye on spirituality at its very essence of continued existence is what I got. Later on, when the women and the black people showed up, that warbling voice filled up with pathetic excuses of tropes, and no further excuses of translation or intentional fallacy will give me back the time I wasted over poorly drawn characters, rape culture, and lazy essentialism.
The poor man would have to be able to do it, and it was just like God to pay so little regard to what humans imagine themselves capable of.
It's still Mann, though. There's a reason why he's still an absolute favorite. I still laughed and bawled and pondered my guts out. I'm still going to reread MM in less than ten years, and I'm likely to even pick up this behemoth again around the time I hit the aged range of Jacob's sons around his death bed. These days, if I'm going to read nearly 1500 pages written by a white man, each one better be a fucking fantastic page, and I'm not going to spare a single one out of some misbegotten goat of an idea that Mann can't take it. I'd want the entire corporate framework that makes a miniseries out of this be Jewish (take your conspiracy stereotype and shove it up your ass. Also, black Jewish people exist), but I still want it.
For a man who, contrary to all justice and reason, uses power simply because he has it—one can only laugh at him. If not today, then sometime in the future—and it is the future we shall hold to.
Those who want an unequivocal judgment of good, those who want an unequivocal judgment of bad: make do.
4-star
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David M
440 reviews
393 followers
April 27, 2017
Symphonic ironies. I was not expecting that sudden Marxist digression in the last fifty pages. I guess he was Lukacs's favorite author for a reason.
Love & death, recognition & forgiveness. There's a lot here. May try and write out some thoughts about it later.
...
thoughts?
-In the underworld one finds only filth and gold...
This year (2017) I'm trying to hedge my bets for the apocalypse by reading both Marx and the Bible.
Among (many) other things, this gargantuan novel cycle is a meditation on the universal human capacity to become an instrument of god's self-awareness. After a good 1,500 pages, Mann leaves this becoming curiously arrested. With a little wink, the author hints that Joseph's triumph may also be its opposite. A beautiful homecoming in which he just happens to lead his people into the land of their enslavement.
Thus, I was a bit frustrated in my impatience to find direct insight into the end times, but then how could it be otherwise?
While I wouldn't necessarily call him a comic writer, Mann certainly is fond of winking. His prose may appear relatively conventional next to the likes of Joyce. Nonetheless, through the use of irony and the interplay of ideas he's able to create a dizzying labyrinth.
Not that it's a perfect. There were times reading it when I got hopelessly bogged down, all momentum grinding to a halt. I'd still say Magic Mountain is probably Mann's greatest novel. It's the one where he was most successful at wedding the demands of the novel with the philosophical essay, making ideas novelistic. Here, as well as in Dr. Faustus, ideas sometimes fits awkwardly with plot.
Even so, I do think Joseph and His Brothers is a book I'll be reading the rest of my life. Never going to really get to the bottom of it. The last hundred pages or so are truly something to behold. Without sacrificing any complexity, Mann is able to give an incredibly moving depiction of forgiveness.
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LA Times review
A Joseph for modern times, for all time
BY MERLE RUBIN
AUG. 14, 2005 12 AM PT
MERLE RUBIN IS A CONTRIBUTING WRITER TO BOOK REVIEW.
IN the years when Germany was besieged by inflation, depression and social unrest, Thomas Mann -- whose active role in defending the beleaguered Weimar Republic would earn him a place on the Nazis’ enemies list -- began work on a project that would fill his imagination with images, ideas, sounds and personages from the distant past: his four-novel masterpiece, “Joseph and His Brothers.”
Mann, who’d been awarded the Nobel Prize for literature in 1929, was living in exile in Switzerland when the first volume, “The Stories of Jacob,” was published in 1933, the year Hitler came to power in Germany. “Young Joseph” followed in 1934, and in 1936, the year “Joseph in Egypt” came out, the Nazis stripped Mann of his German citizenship. Two years later, he immigrated to America, where he completed the final volume. “My work proceeded beneath the blue of the California sky -- so like that of Egypt -- and to it my narrative surely owes much of its serenity and cheerfulness ... ,” Mann wrote in an introduction titled “Sixteen Years.”
Written in a time of war, when the fate of the world seemed to hang in the balance, “Joseph the Provider” (published in 1943) was -- and still is -- a remarkably calm, gracious and indeed cheerful book, its portrait of Joseph’s provident management of Egypt’s economy influenced in part by Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal.
The four-novel sequence “Joseph and His Brothers” first appeared in English in 1948, translated by Helen Lowe-Porter with the author’s blessing. In his introduction, Mann movingly described the work as having been “my refuge, my comfort, my homeland ... the guarantee of my own steadfastness amid a storm of change.” Plunging into the deep well of the past, “Joseph and His Brothers” transports us to a realm both strangely familiar and radically different, peopled with characters whose ideas, whose very way of thinking, differ profoundly from ours.
Yet the problems they face, the choices they make, have a timeless resonance. Love, hate, trickery, sibling rivalry, vengeance, reconciliation -- along with these perennial human concerns are broader themes: the contrast between the relatively simple life of Joseph’s people and the sophisticated civilization of imperial Egypt; the notion of progress; the idea of consciousness as something evolving and of the covenant between the human and the divine as part of this process.
John E. Woods, who has won praise for his translations of “Buddenbrooks,” “Dr. Faustus” and “The Magic Mountain,” has approached the Joseph tetralogy with immense conviction and enthusiasm. So eager is he to win a new generation to this spacious, serenely wondrous work that he suggests readers shouldn’t start at the beginning with “Descent Into Hell,” Mann’s meditative (Goethe-esque) prelude locating the story in its various theological, historical and mythological contexts. Instead, he directs readers to begin with one of Mann’s most arresting and dramatic pieces of storytelling, the tale of Joseph’s sister Dinah.
Woods recommends reading the relevant portions of Genesis in tandem with Mann’s greatly expanded versions of these stories; indeed, doing this enables one to admire the aptness of his characterizations and the shrewdness and profundity of his insights into the stories, from Abraham’s departure from the land of idols to Joseph’s exile and eventual triumph in a land regarded by his forefathers with deep suspicion.
Mann’s Pharaoh is a dreamy, pampered youth given to abstraction, with a passion for converting his people from their primitive beliefs to an enlightened, quasi-monotheistic sun worship. Unlike his forebears, he’s never had to fight, so he espouses a sweet but naive pacifism that verges on downright passivity in the face of danger. Fortunately, Joseph is on hand to press for the “doughty vigor” needed to defend one’s country against human foes and to cope with natural disaster.
Like others who reinterpret previously translated works, Woods is critical of his predecessor’s efforts, linking “Joseph’s” lukewarm reception in the United States to Lowe-Porter’s penchant for rather archaic, biblical-sounding language. This is a bit unfair, for in some instances, her version is crisper. But Woods is generally more accurate, closer to the original German. Still, in those passages where Mann spins out his intricately wrought sentences, there’s not much either translator can do to simplify matters, and it would be false to Mann’s ruminative, ironic, playfully ponderous, quintessentially Germanic prose to do so.
A composition in four parts (like a symphony), Mann’s retelling of the Joseph story is certainly long, but not when compared with other monumental masterworks such as Proust’s “Remembrance of Things Past.” To immerse oneself in four novels on an engrossing, familiar subject is surely not beyond the capacity of an ordinary reader. As Woods notes in his introduction, other factors conspired against “Joseph’s” popularity. In postwar Germany, Christians seemed to find it heterodox, Communists had no time for books with religious elements and any potential Jewish readership had been lost in the death camps or had emigrated. West German intellectuals were not keen on “biblical novels.” Instead, they were far more interested in “Doctor Faustus,” which came out in 1947, pretty much overshadowing “Joseph.”
Mann, however, regarded it as his magnum opus, calling it his “pyramid,” an immense achievement that would long endure. “Is it too much to expect,” he mused, “that posterity (assuming we can expect posterity to emerge yet in something like decent intellectual shape) may on occasion pause to wonder how during those years, from 1926 to 1942, when heart and brain were besieged daily by the wildest demands, such a narrative as this ... could be nurtured and completed under those turbulent circumstances?”
Posterity, that glimmering land beyond the horizon where, it is generally hoped, genius will at last be understand and appreciated: What if it turned out to be no more than a mirage? Although there is little doubt as to Mann’s genius, one wonders how widely -- or deeply -- he is read these days. Those who do are most likely to know him through his hauntingly elegiac “Death in Venice,” his brilliantly stimulating “The Magic Mountain” or his portrait of an artist -- and a culture -- on a path into the abyss in “Doctor Faustus.”
Yet the very qualities that once put readers off may in the end ensure that, like the pyramids, Mann’s grand construct will endure. For one thing, we are witnessing a renewed interest in the Bible and, indeed, in all varieties of religion. In “Whose Bible Is It?,” renowned biblical scholar Jaroslav Pelikan praises Mann’s book as “the outstanding literary example in the twentieth century of how the ever ancient beauty of the Bible can become ever new....” “A Dictionary of Biblical Tradition in English Literature” pronounces it “the definitive modern rendering of the Joseph story [and] perhaps the greatest single commentary on the life of the biblical Joseph ever written.”
For those not enticed by the biblical connection, Mann’s encyclopedic knowledge of ancient Near Eastern history, mythology, customs and societies allows him to create a spellbinding portrait of a vanished world: brilliant, colorful and dramatic, yet at the same time erudite, thoughtful and analytical. *
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Wall Street Journal review
Putting Literary Flesh on Biblical Bones
Where the Old Testament provides a statement of fact, Mann provides heightened and detailed drama.ILLUSTRATION: RYAN INZANA
By Joseph Epstein
Anyone with the least literary pretensions has read one or another work by Thomas Mann.
Some will have read "Buddenbrooks," his saga about a Baltic German mercantile family as its energy peters out;
others, "The Magic Mountain," that most philosophical of novels, set in a tuberculosis sanitarium in Switzerland.
One is likely to have encountered the novella "Death in Venice," or one of his many splendid short stories.
But not many people, I suspect, will have read "Joseph and His Brothers," his 1,207-page tetralogy of rich and rewarding complexity.
I, a man of extravagant literary pretensions, had not read it until recently. Fifteen or so years ago, I made a run at it, but hit the wall roughly at page 60. What goaded me to take another shot was finding a clean copy at a used-book store. What I discovered is a true masterpiece of a most extraordinary kind. Not the least unusual thing about this vastly ambitious work is that Mann chose to tell a story that everyone already knows.
It's the Old Testament account of Jacob, son of Isaac, brother of Esau, and his 12 sons, and of the most impressive of those sons, Joseph, who goes on to become Pharaoh's principal administrator, his Grand Vizier, during the seven fat and seven lean years visited upon Egypt. Mann used this best of all Old Testament stories—one of overweening vanity, betrayal, reunion and forgiveness—as, in effect, an outline, which he filled in and retold with the narrative power of the great novelist that he was.
In the Old Testament, for example, in a mere half page we are told that Potiphar's wife, enamored of Joseph's good looks, attempts to seduce him, Joseph refuses, she then falsely accuses him of attempted rape, and he is sent off to prison. Mann, or his narrator, claims to be "horrified at the briefness and curtness of the original account" in the Bible. In Mann's version, 80 or so pages are spent on the incident, with Potiphar's wife's beauty, cosmetics, handmaidens, seduction methods and much else persuasively described. Where the Old Testament provides a statement of fact, Mann provides heightened and detailed drama.
Mann took 16 years, between 1926 and 1942, to complete "Joseph and His Brothers"—the tumultuous time of world-wide Depression and Adolf Hitler's rise. Nazism forced Mann and his family into exile—first in Europe, then in the U.S. But he pressed on with his novel. In early 1930 he traveled to the Middle East, where "with my physical eyes I saw the Nile country from the Delta up (or down) to Nubia and the memorable places of the Holy Land." This book, during these hard years, was "the undertaking that alone vouchsafed the continuity of my life."
"Joseph and His Brothers" is an astonishing feat—a book in which an artist, through scholarship and above all through imagination, has worked his way back through time and insinuated himself into the culture of the biblical Jews and the more elaborately exotic culture of the ancient Egyptians. Mann, ever the ironist, at one point early in the book writes: "I do not conceal from myself the difficulty of writing about people who do not precisely know who they are."
The book is studded with exquisite touches. Laban, Jacob's exploiting father-in-law, possesses "the hands of a having man." Of Jacob's love for Rachel, Mann writes: "Such is love, when it is complete: feeling and lust together, tenderness and desire." Apropos of Jacob's agedness, he writes of "the touching if unattractive misshapenness of old age." Potiphar's wife, distraught over her passion for Joseph, is barely able to eat "a bird's liver and a little vegetable." Rachel's labor in giving birth to Joseph is so well described as to leave the reader exhausted.
Past and present are interwoven throughout this novel. "Men saw through each other in that distant day," Mann writes, "as well as in this." Recurrence is a leitmotif that plays through the book. "For we move in the footsteps of others, and all life is but the pouring of the present into the forms of the myth," he notes. Through the novel Joseph is aware that his is a role in a script already written by God—and this gives him the courage to carry on: "For let a man once have the idea that God has special plans for him, which he must further by his aid, and he will pluck up his heart and strain his understanding to get the better of all things and be their master." The woman Tamar, who in the disguise of a prostitute allows herself to become pregnant by Joseph's brother Judah, does so because she, too, wants to be inscribed forever in the history of this important family.
One could create a dazzling anthology of aphorisms from "Joseph and His Brothers." "It takes understanding to sin; yes, at bottom, all spirit is nothing else than understanding of sin." And: "We fail to realize the indivisibility of the world when we think of religion and politics as fundamentally separate fields." And: "No, the agonies of love are set apart; no one has ever repented having suffered them." And again: 'Man, then, was a result of God's curiosity about himself."
In another of the book's aphorisms, Mann writes: "Indeed resolution and patience are probably the same thing." How often must that sentiment, over the years he spent composing this grand prose epic, have occurred to Mann himself. At the end of his foreword to the single-volume edition, he wonders if his tetralogy "will perhaps be numbered among the great books." He cannot know, of course, but as the son of a tradesman he does know that only quality endows the products of human hands with endurance. "The song of Joseph is good, solid work," he writes, "done out of that fellow feeling for which mankind has always been sensitively receptive. A measure of durability is, I think, inherent in it."
Mann was correct. In "Joseph and His Brothers" he created a masterpiece, which is to say, a work built to last.
Mr. Epstein's latest book, "Essays in Biography," will be published this autumn by Axios Press
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Vishy’s Blog
On Books, Reading and other Delightful Things
How to read Thomas Mann’s ‘Joseph and his Brothers’
July 19, 2021 by Vishy
In his introduction to Thomas Mann’s epic ‘Joseph and his Brothers‘, translator John E. Woods gives this suggestion on how to read the book.
“And yet the question remains how best should a reader approach a work so monumental and complex – plunge in at page 1 and devil take the hindmost?
That is, after all, the way Mann wrote it to be read.
With considerable trepidation, I would like to suggest a different strategy for first-time readers of this great novel.
I propose you start with “The Story of Dinah,” part 3 of The Stories of Jacob. Based on a Bible story (Genesis 33:17-35:5) never taught in the Sunday schools of my youth, this tale of passion and revenge becomes, in Mann’s hand, a marvelous epitome of the virtues of the novel as a whole.
My hope, and my guess, is that you will be irrevocably caught up in this great literary adventure and eager to climb the “pyramid.” But beware : don’t begin at the beginning even yet.
For those just getting their climbing legs in shape, “Prelude: Descent into Hell” may well turn out to be literally that. This opening chapter’s larger historical and theological perspectives introduce many of the themes that Mann will weave into his four novels, but without a story to hang them on, you may well feel he has pushed you over the edge and down a well that is indeed bottomless.
So, “Dinah” first, then back to part 1, “At the Well” and at some point, halfway up volume 1 or so, you will want to look back, and give the Prelude its due, for it has monumental rewards.”
Being an old-fashioned reader, I didn’t follow his advice. I refused to take the easy way out. I did what Woods has described at the beginning – “plunge in at page 1 and devil take the hindmost” 😆 I started with ‘Prelude : Descent into Hell’.
It wasn’t the hell that Woods had said it might be. It wasn’t that bad. It was actually amazing.
It was vintage Mann though – complex and challenging prose, long sentences, but if you don’t get intimidated and you persist, you’ll be amply rewarded. Mann doesn’t court you with his first sentence and paragraph, he challenges you, he demands your attention, he makes you put in the hard work and the intellectual effort. It is worth it.
Yesterday, I finished the prelude (yes, the descent into hell as Mann describes it – I’m back now to tell the tale 😆), part 1 and part 2, and I am knocking at the doors of part 3. I can’t wait to get started on ‘The Story of Dinah‘.
After quite a while, I’ve managed to finish 100 straight pages from a book. I think I can say now that my reading slump is officially over 😊 Yay!
Do you follow a specific reading plan while tackling a big book?
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Posted in German literature, Reading Adventure | Tagged German literature, John E. Woods, Joseph And His Brothers, Thomas Mann | 5 Comments
5 Responses
on July 20, 2021 at 8:22 PM | Replykaggsysbookishramblings
I would be the same, Vishy – if I’m reading a chunkster I tend to just plunge in and got for it. Usually works!!!
on July 22, 2021 at 11:42 AM | ReplyVishy
So nice to know that, Kaggsy 😊 Yes, just plunging into a book is the best!
on July 29, 2021 at 5:05 AM | Replyburiedinprint
Hah, I don’t know what I love more, that there is someone who’s contributed such a detailed plan in order to undertake a difficult read, or that you read the plan and said pffft to that. 😀
In the past, at times, I’ve been able to find annotated editions of classics and I just loved that. More recently, thanks to Mel at The Reading Life, I read Malcolm Lowry’s Under the Volcano, and I relied heavily on an online resource (similar to the type of thing that exists for Ulysses I believe, which I’ve never read). But mostly, as K has said above, and as you’ve done, I just read, sometimes in very small bits.
on August 7, 2021 at 1:55 PM | ReplyVishy
Glad to know that you read Malcolm Lowry book by researching and reading the related resources. It is such an enriching experience reading like this. I don’t always read like this, but I remember reading The Master and Margarita like this, reading every comment and footnote and researching on them and reading about the writers referenced in the notes. Thanks for sharing 😊
on February 13, 2023 at 1:06 AM | ReplyGabriella
I don’t mind reading long books . My favourite novel is KristinLavransdatter and that is a trilogy . Had no problem reading it from beginning to end . Joseph and his brothers i attempted to read years ago and got half way . Now I will try Woods translation and perhaps begin with Dinah’s story as I don’t want to get discouraged right at the start since lately I have strarrei so many books and left them halfway I don’t know why.
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